Facebook content moderation system mistakenly flags French town "Bitche"

The official page of French town Ville de Bitche was mistakenly flagged by Facebook's automated content moderation system, and taken down without explanation.

Ville de Bitche, a fortress town of 5,000+ people in the Moselle department of north-eastern France, saw its official Facebook page - titled Ville de Bitche - suddenly removed without explanation.

The platform claimed the page violated community standards regarding "offensive language," leaving the town without its primary communication channel to share local news, gossip, and essential neighborhood updates for three weeks.

To maintain a digital presence, the town hall was forced to create a workaround page titled "Mairie 57230" (using its postal code), while other nearby towns, such as Rohrbach-lès-Bitche, proactively renamed their pages to "Ville de Rohrbach" to avoid being the next victims of the algorithmic sweep.

Bitche communications official Valérie Degouy told Radio Mélodie that she appealed the decision the same day the town's page was taken down, but had not heard back from Facebook. 'I tried to reach out to Facebook in every possible way, through different forms, but there's nothing [I could] do,' she said.

Facebook reinstated the page and apologised, telling CNN it was 'removed in error.' Commentators suggested the page was likely to have been flagged by Facebook's content moderation system, and the mistake was then compounded by human error.

In a press statement released after the incident, Mayor of Bitche Benoît Kieffer urged Facebook to be more transparent and fair in how it makes content moderation decisions.

News, commentary, analysis 🗞️

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• https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-unpublishes-official-page-for-french-town-of-bitche/

• https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2021/4/14/22383541/facebook-bitche-france-page-city-profranity-censorship-moderation

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